Paneled Trailer Walls

I was born to paneled walls:

not drywall, not plaster, but

thin brown grain running

through every room of a

trailer. Each sheet joined

to the next by a narrow edge.

I remember my hands before

I remember words: small fingertips

tracing those seams, following

them, as if they led somewhere

to that sense of comfort. My

hands would walk the walls

The way another child might

walk the bank of a creek.

Something steady lived in those

walls: something I trusted. When

we moved from the trailer

into a house my parents

Had managed to have built.

The new walls were paneled

too. I was maybe four going

on five and we carried our

lives into it. The eighties

loved the imitation wood,

And our house wore the same

familiar skin as the trailer.

At night, I lay in bed and studied

the grain. The knots and swirls

gathered themselves into faces.

A dark knot became an eye.

A warped line became a mouth.

The walls watched me and the

longer I gazed, the more certain

I became that something was

hiding there, waiting for me

to notice. Some faces frightened

Me. They seemed ancient and

foreboding, pressing out beneath

the smooth finish, looking out

from another world. I would pull

the covers over my head and hide

inside my own breath, listening as

It became louder, feeling the air

warm and damp against my cheeks.

The blanket became my cave–

a shelter, a second darkness–

The heat would drive me out

I would look again and find the

Faces had changed. The monster

was gone. In its place an old man

rested: distorted. A stray cluster

of lines became a bird to fly me

away. The shadows would soften

into something kind, so I could

Sleep. The same wall, the same

grain yet somehow transformed.

Night after night, the paneling

taught me how thin the distance

is between terror and wonder.

And still, when I think about it

I remember those ridges first,

the place where one panel

met the other – my fingers moving,

finding comfort in the joining of

things, while faces drifted through

the wood like strange weather.